This week it’s Top 10 Sequels. I’m not a big series reader so might not make it to 10, but surely that means the series I read are really good…or possibly I can’t leave a series unfinished…errr…yeah.

Links lead to reviews, pictures lead to amazon. In no particular order.

1) The Harry Potter books I could have cheated and done each one as a top ten (that would get rid of 6!) but that’s cheating really! My favourites are Chamber of Secrets and Half-Blood Prince, can you see the connection?

2) The Subtle Knife I love Northern Lights (The Golden Compass- if you insist), and I do think it’s the best of the series, but The Subtle Knife is my favourite of the sequels.

3) Dearly Devoted Dexter again I prefered the first, but I enjoyed Dearly Devoted Dexter a lot too, it’s the only other book of the series I’ve read so far

4) Teacher Man, I just loved seeing how far McCourt had come since Angela’s Ashes. Rather an inspiring sequel.

5) Meatball Sandwich and Cream Crumbit’s been a while since I’ve raved about Scott Stabile’s Brooklyn Bites series, but it remains the best indie fiction I’ve read. I urge you all to read it

6) Catching Fireyeah maybe a bit of a stretch (err we need to carry on this series…what shall we do…?) but still actually awesome

7) 1Q84 Book 2 the best is the trilogy as far as I’m concerned (I was intending to write my review of book 3 today, but ended up doing this instead)

8) Birdsong yes, it is a sequel! After The Girl at The Lion d’Or and Charlotte Grey. Both good, just not as good as Birdsong.

9) The Cliff Path second of the Shouting Wind trilogy. And second best.

10) I had just signed off and I realised I didn’t mention Thursday Next? But do I really have to pick a best sequel?!

1. The Golem’s Eye and Ptolemy’s Gate as a sequel to the scintillating The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud.

2. Still Life by A S Byatt as a sequel to Virgin in the Garden. There are two more books that follow this, but Still Life is by far the best.

3. Lord of the Rings as the sequel to The Hobbit.

4. The Magician’s Nephew as the sequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The STORY is a prequel actually, but in the series of Narnia books it was a sequel.

5. River of Smoke as a sequel to Sea of Poppies. Absolutely fantastic. Authored by Amitav Ghosh. I can’t wait for the third in the series to come out. One of the rare times when the sequel is actually better than the first book.

Teacher Man is a fabulous book, absolutely loved it and the Murakami novels just get better with each one, there is nothing more pleasant than a trilogy that gets better with each sequel, two of my favourites are the Josephine Bonaparte trilogy and Nancy E Turner’s trilogy which begins with the book These Is My Words, both are fantastic and both feature actual women who lived amazing lives, but their stories read like novels.

YES! You recognized my Hitchhiker’s quote so OF COURSE you like Jasper Fforde! I am in total love with The Thursday Next series. It’s like Hitchhiker’s but set inside classic literature instead of space…and there’s a dodo! What’s not to love about this series?! In fact, I think it would be great as high school reading because it deals with the classics…but it’s funny! Why can’t we have funny books in school?! They are all so horribly depressing

I know what you mean about school books, Elizabeth. I’m sure we did read a good one though…err The Diary of Adrian Mole was good. I can see Thursday Next being good, except sometimes it helps to know the stories already. I actually prefer Jasper Ffordes Shade of Grey…he keeps delaying the prequel though, grrr.